This illustrates the information from a single feature, green fluorescence, to categorize cell populations. The analysis engine in AAD technology uses more than 60 features to analyze the animal’s immune response.

Technology Overview

Time is money, especially when it comes to detection and diagnosis

Whether you’re dealing with mastitis or a host of infectious diseases ranging from PRRS to hoof-and-mouth, the sooner it’s detected, the greater the savings in terms of lives, money, profits or reputation. The problem is that today most testing of production animals is done with expensive, complex instruments in far-away labs. Specially trained operators use different technology and equipment for different analysis – a separate hematology analyzer, chemistry analyzer, immuno-chemistry analyzer and flow cytometer, for example. So you wait hours or often days for critical results.

AAD offers a revolutionary paradigm – a small, simple, imaging-based instrument that can be paired with a variety of disposable tests for different analyses. This way, one farm-gate unit may perform various tests including:

  • Hematology
  • Immunoassays
  • Urinalysis
  • Coagulation
  • Cellular analysis
  • Chemistry
  • Serology

AAD can do this because we perform hematology and cell analysis in a dry format instead of requiring the usual multiple fluid reagents, pumps and tubing. The stain in the disposable cartridge makes different cells “glow” at specific colors, then the reader instrument uses analysis techniques from astronomy to separate cells from the “junk”, or sediment, blood, clots, and mucus clumps. Each cell is optimized individually, and multiple-wavelength fluorescence highlights minute cytochemical, morphological and immunochemical changes in cells involved in the immune response. Computer algorithms used in mapping and feature recognition in astronomy and military applications further enhance the virtual images. The result is a differential cell count, which tells much about the state of the body’s immune system in minutes without the training, reagents and disposal issues associated with complex lab testing. AAD founder Rudy Rodriguez helped develop this image-analysis technology.

AAD also has a patent pending for another technology unique to AAD that holds promise for detecting whether an animal has ever been exposed to a particular pathogen based on a rapid, on-farm test.